Archive for the ‘Algorithms’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/10/21
This is so cool: graphical [Wayback/Archive] Introduction to the A* Algorithm
It is still being updated, which is even cooler:
Created 26 May 2014, updated Aug 2014, Feb 2016, Jun 2016, Jun 2020, Jul 2023
These are for general graph traversal. That Wikipedia article only mentions depth-first search and breadth-first search, but forgets the A* search algorithm which is an extension of the also not mentioned Dijkstra’s algorithm which in turn is based on breadth-first search.
The visualisations cover the breadth-first algorithms.
The example code is Python based, but easy to translate into other languages.
The visualisation code is in JavaScript, using these files (they Archive.is versions are more accurate than the Wayback Machine ones):
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Posted in Algorithms, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/10/14
I was in my 50s when I learned that both algorism and algorithm are named after the 9th-century Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi who founded algebra.
Related:
Via:
–jeroen
Posted in Algorithms, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, History, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/06/26
From a while back: [Wayback/Archive] Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture : programming which has a “TL;DR for non CS people” and a “Here’s an explanation” well worth reading.
It’s about the work of Andrew Krapivin with co-authors Martín Farach-Colton and William Kuszmaul.
A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.
Reminder to self to find any real world implementations of this new hashing algorithm.
Materials are the “easier” article [Wayback/Archive] Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture | Quanta Magazine which refers to the actual paper:
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Posted in Algorithms, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Software Development | Tagged: DeepSeek, hashtable, innovation | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/13
From a while back, but still interesting:
- [Wayback/Archive] Counting the leading zeroes in a binary number with C#
- [Wayback/Archive] c# – Getting the number of leading 1 bits – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Barry Kelly and [Wayback/Archive] SoapBox)
Especially the first link explains the algorithm very well and is similar to links referred to from the Stack Overflow question as it is based on counting ones (and leading ones are basically leading zeros but bit-inverted).
It also explains a cool thing for leading zeros: modern CPU have instructions which .NET Core.
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Posted in .NET, AArch64/arm64, Algorithms, ARM, Assembly Language, C, C#, C++, Delphi, Development, Software Development, x64, x86 | Tagged: csharp, dotnet, dotnetcore | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/09/26
A while ago [Wayback/Archive] b0rk (Julia Evans [Wayback/Archive) wrote an interesting Tweet on finding back where you broke code of which the OCR text reads like this:
strategy: change working code into broken code
If I have a working version of the program, I like to:
- go back to the working code
- slowly start changing it to be more like my broken code
- test if it’s still working after every single tiny change
· ⬊⸳⬈˙⬊⸳⬈˙⬊⸳ OH THAT’S WHAT BROKE IT!!!
I like this because it puts me back on solid ground: with every change make that DOESN’T cause the bug to come back, I know that wasn’t the problem.
by JULIA EVANS @bork wizardzines.com
This is similar (her arrows were of varying length) to using a binary search algorithm hunting for where the code was broken using bisection: repeatedly halving your search space to quickly zoom into the problem.
Another important aspect is that small commits while fiddling to solve an issue can help you determine what small commit was actually solving the issue.
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Posted in Algorithms, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Event, git, Mercurial/Hg, Ruby, Software Development, Source Code Management, Versioning | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/05/22
A few years back [Wayback/Archive] 🔎Julia Evans🔍 (@b0rk) / Twitter asked for tips on learning git which resulted in a wealth of resources.
Related: [Wayback/Archive] xkcd: Git
So the below are for my link archive.
Yes, I have removed most of not all Unicode emojis as they are a pain for visually impaired to listen to from screen readers.
Future
Later I want to categorise all these, maybe using categories like these:
- Videos
- Stories/narrations
- Levels (beginner/intermediate/advance)
- Direction (inside-out vs outside-in)
- (Rough) reimplementations
- Perspectives from different version control systems
- Failures: learning from or preventing them
I need to contemplate about that for a while.
--jeroen
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Posted in Algorithms, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Event, git, Software Development, Source Code Management | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/02/28
Below is a list of the Borland documentation that BitSavers added in 2022, ordered by relevance to me (and how I finally asked Peter Sawatzki if he still had the monochrome TDVIDEO.DLL he wrote for Turbo Debugger 3.0 for Windows):
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Posted in 8087, Algorithms, Assembly Language, Borland C++, C, C++, Debugging, Development, Floating point handling, Profiling, Software Development, Turbo Assembler, Turbo C, Turbo Debugger, Turbo Profiler, x86 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/11/08
Always schedule your meetings in UTC, and use ISO-8601 date and time notation. Because time zone conversions are hard, especially with so many daylight saving time conventions.
I want not just a “UTC or GTFO” shirt, but a “UTC and ISO-8601, or GTFO” shirt.
It means I do not agree with [Archive.is] Colin Nederkoorn on Twitter: “Pro tip: Don’t schedule recurring meetings in UTC if you live in a place with daylight savings.… “ with multi-time zone teams: having it in UTC will balance out the DST changes over the teams.
Some more relevant Tweets that triggered me writing this post:
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Posted in Algorithms, Development, ISO 8601, Power User, Software Development, UTC | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 